[birdland-00-deactivated20250421]

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me.

— T. S. Eliot

[mournfulroses]

Anne Michaels, from "Infinite Gradation," originally published in October 2017

[superhell]

its not funny anymore i wish i was a pebble

[lavideenrose]

[memorycycle]

do yall think this 14$ can last me the rest of my life

[deadontheweb3]

[thecrownedgoddess]

“Surgical” preempts words like precision in a way that doesn’t only add degrees (as in, take us from precise to very precise). “Surgical” is a qualitative modifier; the substance of the precision itself changes with the addition of the word. We live in a society that grants doctors a presumed goodness, in which doctors are understood to be moral at an average exceeding that of the general population. By associating its actions with medicine, the Israeli military borrows this presumed morality to lend those actions certain moral valences—which are otherwise not self-evident at all. As someone who has jumped through the hoops of medical training and chosen to spend her time in operating rooms, I can say that exposure to neither medicine broadly nor surgery specifically necessarily makes one a good person, although it can certainly make a person less patient, more confident—for both better and worse. Medicine, like any technical skill set, is a tool, wielded one way or another depending on the user’s intentions. And doctors, who are more attuned than most to the vulnerabilities of the human body and how it unravels, have played a frontline role in stitching together torture regimens from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib. In Israeli torture prisons today, it is surgeons who perform generous above-knee limb amputations—instead of limb-salvaging procedures, which are presumably a waste of Israeli resources—on prisoners whose toes have necrosed or grown infected, whose extremities have been made to lose circulation, zip ties on just tight enough, medical neglect ongoing for just long enough. It is doctors who decide that a hostage facing “enhanced interrogation” to extract false testimony can handle a little more—that a prisoner decompensating from his injuries doesn’t need to be transported to a hospital just yet. It was doctors, approximately 100 Israeli ones, who in November 2023 signed a letterdeclaring that, despite significant evidence to the contrary, Palestinians hospitals are “terrorist nests,” that Palestinians are trying “to take advantage of western morality, they are the ones who brought destruction upon themselves […] Attacking terrorist headquarters is the right and the duty of the Israeli army.” The “western morality” they cite has been on full display for the last year: these doctors, bound by this supposedly moral framework, do not see Palestinians as people. It’s not clear from the letter which of the hospitals in Gaza should be considered terrorist nests. The doctors who wrote it refuse a world where a Palestinian might need a hospital to be a hospital because their body is a body. Or they have decided Palestinians in Gaza lack even the basic right to tend to each other’s bodies. “Those who confuse hospitals with terrorism,” the letter goes on, “must understand that hospitals are not a safe place for them.” It is within these doctors’ domain of expertise to decide who is confused, and about what—within their domain to decide for whom a hospital should be safe, and for whom it should not. Their approach resembles that of an oncologist offering a patient chemotherapy: better safe than sorry, the “sorry” being hospitals left standing, the cancer being Palestinians. I assume these doctors took the same Hippocratic Oath that I did and promised to do no harm. Their definition of harm leads them here, precisely. From these doctors’ perspective, it is their duty to obliterate the final lifelines of a people whose existence is, for their state, harm incarnate. From these doctors’ perspective, this obliteration is a matter of life and death.

Mary Turfah, The Most Moral Army

[psikonauti]

Farah Al Qasimi (Abu Dhabi,b. 1991)

Screenshot 2020-02-20 at 2:55:27 p.m.

[itsteatimewitches]

“You are the child of God’s holy gift of life. You come from me. But you are not me. Your soul and your body are your own, and yours to do with as you wish.”

— Burt Holloway (Secretary 2002)

[flawsallover]

“I’ve been a prisoner

of this desert for 35 years

I’ll tell you something

that happened to me

It was just after I got married

We had all kinds of troubles

I was so fed up with it

that I decided

to end it all

One morning, before dawn

I put a rope in my car

My mind was made up,

I wanted to kill myself

I set off for Mianeh.

This was in 1960

I reached

the mulberry tree plantations

I stopped there.

It was still dark

I threw the rope over a tree

but it didn’t catch hold

I tried once, twice

but to no avail

So then I climbed the tree

and tied the rope on tight

Then I felt something soft

under my hand. Mulberries

Deliciously sweet mulberries

I ate one.

It was succulent,

then a second and third

Suddenly, I noticed

that the sun was rising

over the mountaintop

What sun, what scenery,

what greenery!

All of a sudden, I heard

children heading off to school

They stopped to look at me

They asked me to shake the tree

The mulberries fell and they ate

I felt happy

Then I gathered some mulberries

to take them home

My wife was still sleeping

When she woke up,

she ate mulberries as well

And she enjoyed them too

I had left to kill myself

and I came back with mulberries

A mulberry saved my life

A mulberry saved my life

You ate mulberries,

so did your wife,

and everything was fine

No, it wasn’t like that,

but I changed

Afterwards, it was better

but I had in fact changed my mind

I felt better

Every man on earth

has problems in his life

That’s the way it is.

There are so many people on earth

There isn’t one family

without problems

I don’t know your problem

otherwise I could explain better

When you go to see a doctor

you tell him where it hurts

Excuse me,

you’re not Turkish, are you?

Here’s a joke.

Don’t feel offended

A Turk

goes to see a doctor.

He tells him:

“When I touch my body

with my finger, it hurts

"When I touch my head, it hurts,

my legs, it hurts

"my belly, my hand, it hurts”

The doctor examines him

and then tells him:

“Your body’s fine

but your finger’s broken!”

My dear man,

your mind is ill

but there’s nothing wrong

with you. Change your outlook

I had left home to kill myself

but a mulberry changed me

an ordinary, unimportant mulberry

The world isn’t the way

you see it

You have to change your outlook

and change the world

Be optimistic

Look at things positively

You’re in your prime!

Because of some minor problem

you want to commit suicide

For one single problem

Life is like a train

that keeps on moving forward

and then reaches the end

of the line, the terminus

And death waits at the terminus

Of course,

death is a solution

but not at first,

not during your youth

Forgive me for dragging you off

along this rocky road

You think something is good,

then realize you’re wrong

The main thing is to think hard

You believe what you do is right

but then you realize

that you’re wrong

Talk, say something

to give me a breather

I’ve talked too much,

I’ve said everything

I’ve given a whole speech.

Just say something!

Turn left here, please

In any case, if you don’t talk,

I’ll talk some more

If you don’t talk,

I will

Have you lost all hope?

Have you ever looked at the sky

when you wake in the morning?

At dawn, don’t you want to see

the sun rise?

The red and yellow of the sun

at sunset,

don’t you want to see that

anymore?

Have you seen the moon?

Don’t you want to see the stars?

The night of the full moon,

don’t you want to see it again?

You want to close your eyes?

Please, take the right fork!

The people on the other side

would like to take a look here

and you want to rush over there!

Don’t you ever want to drink

water from a spring again?

Or wash your face in that water?

Turn right!

If you look at the four seasons

each season brings fruit

In summer, there’s fruit,

in autumn too

winter brings different fruit

and spring too

No mother can fill her fridge

with such a variety of fruit

for her children

No mother can do as much

for her children

as God does for His creatures

You want to refuse all that?

You want to give it all up?

You want to give up

the taste of the cherries?

Don’t. I’m your friend,

I’m begging you!

Turn right

Turn right,

this is the main road

Turn left, please

Before I get out

I’m going to sing you

a song in Turkish

It means: “My love,

I’m flying off, come to me

"I’m hounded from my friend’s

garden, come to me

"From happy days before

"I’ve fallen on hard times,

come to me”

Tell me,

we barely know each other

You go, I’m your friend.

You stay, I’m your friend

In any case, I’m your friend

You stay, I’m your friend.

You go, I’ll be your friend too

Good-bye.”

Taste of Cherry (Persian: طعم گيلاس… ‎, Ta’m-e gīlās…), 1997, Abbas Kiarostami

[tommyriddlez]

i'm a sick weirdo, do you still like me

[jt1674]

[reemillustrated]

snoopy after reading white nights by dostoevsky

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Sylvia Plath

[389]

“A Kind of Blindness, A Kind of Sight” by Jaclyn Kolev Brown

[soul-from-another-era]

It'll be okay *puts a little flower in your hair*

[cosmonautroger]

Taste Of Cherry, Abbas Kiarostami, 1997